What is Iraq Body Count? This area of the website provides background
information on the project, including its aims and methods. The current
page summarises the scope and limitations, as well as listing the major sources of income.

IBC in context provides a
more analytical summary of IBC’s distinct features and social impact.

Iraq: Journalists
in Danger from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is a regularly
updated resource on journalists and media support workers killed in Iraq.

icasualties.org covers military
and other categories of deaths not recorded by IBC.

About the Iraq Body Count project

Iraq Body Count (IBC) records the violent deaths that have resulted
from the 2003 military intervention in Iraq. Its detailed public database includes civilian
deaths caused by US-led coalition and Iraqi government forces and paramilitary or criminal
attacks by others.

IBC’s documentary evidence is drawn from crosschecked media reports of violence leading to
deaths, or of bodies being found, and is supplemented by the careful review and integration of
hospital, morgue, NGO and official figures or records.

Systematically extracted details about deadly incidents and the individuals
killed in them are stored with every entry in the database. The minimum details
always extracted are the number killed, where, and when. Whenever possible, other details
about the killed (e.g. names, demographics) and of the circumstances of their death
(weapons used, perpetrators) are included.

Confusion about the numbers produced by the project can be avoided by bearing
in mind that:

IBC’s figures are not statistical ‘estimates’ but a record of actual,
documented deaths.

IBC records solely violent deaths.

IBC’s detailed database records solely civilian (strictly, ‘non-combatant’) deaths. A separate total that includes combatant deaths is provided on the homepage.

IBC’s figures are constantly updated and revised as new data comes
in, and frequent consultation is advised.

IBC builds on innovative uses of new technologies without which this citizens’ initiative
would be impossible. The project was founded in January 2003 by volunteers
from the UK and USA who felt a responsibility to ensure that the human consequences
of military intervention in Iraq were not neglected.

Iraq Body Count is administered by Conflict Casualties Monitor, a Company Limited by Guarantee (No. 6594314) registered in England and Wales.

Registered address:
86-90 Paul Street
London
EC2A 4NE
United Kingdom

Finally, IBC could not exist without the journalists and media support workers,
Iraqi and international, who labour to report war’s daily carnage at
the risk, and all too often the cost, of their health or their lives.

Throughout our existence, our steadiest source of income has been from concerned individuals. These donations to IBC have been particularly valuable to us when conditions in Iraq have taken a sustained turn for the worse and necessarily required greater monitoring and recording efforts, such as most recently in the period beginning early 2013.

More occasionally throughout our 13 years of existence we have received research- and project-specific grants, principally from foundations and charities focused on peace-building and conflict resolution. Our current and past funder organisations are listed to the right. 1

We are deeply grateful for every type of financial support received, but it has nearly always fallen far short of the actual costs of the work. The project has only kept going because of very substantial long-term personal investments (of both time and money) from a handful of project volunteers.